The Basics of Multi-Cam Live Production

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hi john hess from filmmaker iq and today i'm going to walk you through some things to think about conceptually when setting up a multi-camera live streaming production this video is partly sponsored by hololand and the holiland mars 400s pro wireless transmitter which we'll get into shortly but first let's talk about setting up a multicam live streaming production now i don't need to tell you that streaming has become extremely popular at the same time much more accessible but it's still a complex field that makes me nervous every time i set up a stream in this video i'm going to focus mainly on setting up the capture side of things and assume that you have a robust connection to the internet for the actual stream which is the first thing i ask anytime i'm asked to stream something by a client now what we will discuss is also applicable for a multi-camera capture production as well because this topic is so broad it's hard to talk about in generality so the first thing i always do when approaching a job is to figure out what it is exactly you're trying to capture a gaming stream to twitch with a picture and picture is going to require a different setup than say a podcast or a church service or a basketball game for the purposes of this discussion i'll model a presentation style conference like a ted talk but know that there is an infinite number of possible applications i'm also not going to get into specific step-by-step tutorials on how to set any of this equipment up part of the fun is learning how to set up and testing it but i will try to give you a big picture overview which should lay the groundwork for an approach to any streaming system so backing up let's talk about the big question what is it that i want to see on the stream in my conference example what is the part that i need to focus on is the presenter at a podium is the presenter going to be walking around a stage is there going to be a questions and answers sections i need to have those questions on camera once you have a sense of what it is you want on the screen it's time to get a sense of the space that you'll be working in and by you do that by doing a location scout from the scout you draw a top-down map of the space make note of power outlets establish sound assets internet access available lighting for this video i'll skip over any lighting concerns so if we know what we want to capture we can map out the potential shot angles from our top down diagram we can also figure out where we're going to put our switcher and how we're going to get the signal from those cameras to the switcher at this point we need to ask if there are other sources of video that need to be incorporated into the stream as well such as a slide presentation from powerpoint or pro presenter now many of these sources will also need to be screened for the room as well so you'll need to incorporate some sort of splitter to split the signal for your stream and for the room projector lastly and this is where things get really really tricky are there any off-site video sources that need to be incorporated do you need to have a remote call-in feature to have remote guests i won't go into too much detail on solutions for those because the solutions are very application specific but it is something you can't just make happen on the day of it needs to be planned for in advance so before moving on to talking about the specifics of setting up i want to hammer home the point that you must start with a solid comprehensive idea of what it is you want to capture in the first place because we're doing things live and all the editorial decisions must be made up front now once you have a solid idea of what it is you're expected to capture then we can start building out the streaming setup i don't need to repeat the cliches look we're all guilty of not focusing on audio i am as well and i admit it it will always be an issue with me as i never seem to learn where film has its roots in the visual medium television and now the offshoot of streaming is much more of an audio medium the good news is once you get the audio to a good quality there's really not much more you need to do whereas the picture there's always ways to spice up and complicate things now this being the internet i expect non-stop arguing in the comments over that last point yes obviously the needs of production are going to vary if you're mixing a musical performance there's a lot you need to do you can do to craft the sound artistically versus a conference where a person is speaking into a microphone or even a discussion panel podcast style video but none of that really goes against the point of trying to make getting good sound is crucial for a stream i don't want you to think it's prohibitively expensive it just may require some investment but it is worth it first of all you're going to need to have some sort of separate sound system do not expect to use the sound from your camera for anything except a bit of ambience you need to have microphones specifically for the presenters either table microphones or wearable microphones for getting good sound from a person speaking my golden rule is this get the microphone as close to the source as possible you don't need the most expensive mic ever although some mics obviously are better than others but any mic will perform better when it's closer to the source luckily most events i've had to stream involve rooms that had sound systems set up for sound reinforcement sound reinforcement means the mics are there to amplify them presenters for those people in the room you can then take the signal from that system and send it into your switcher or into a sound input on your camera and if there is an av tech operating that sound board during the event adjusting the levels and making sure everything works smoothly all the better now one key annoyance i've got to bring up there's always one gregarious loud talker that thinks they don't need a microphone to speak to the room remind everyone that if they don't speak into a microphone the people on the stream or the recording will not be able to hear them this is even more annoying recording bands with horn players i'm a trumpet player and i've always been considered too loud but if i'm not on a mic i'm going to be buried by anyone who is now that i've covered situations where there are sound resources already in the room for sound reinforcement what do you do when there isn't anything set up and the room doesn't need sound reinforcement now you're playing a psychological game if you use a tabletop mic or a handheld mic when people speak into the microphone and don't hear any response they'll think the mic is not working and they'll stop using the mic which means you won't hear anything on the stream so if you can't provide some sound reinforcement like your own pa system you'll want to use general capture microphones like boundary microphones or tabletop microphones or wearable microphones that the presenter can put on and then forget about as i said i'm not going to cover every aspect of setting up a sound system because that's a big topic in its own right i just want to reiterate that the sound system should be thought of as its own entirely independent system separate from your actual stream then you tap that system to feed an audio source to your stream on that note don't expect to run sound into your switcher and then pump that sound back out to the room for sound reinforcement there will be a lag and even a lag of one or two frames which is actually amazing for video playback will drive people crazy in the room and for that matter if you are in the room switching cameras it's really hard to try to monitor sound from your switcher because that will always be a little bit behind what's really happening now that i've kind of covered the sound question we can get to what everybody wants to dive right into and that's cameras the cameras i work with and recommend are broadcast and consumer level video cameras you can make a lot of setups using webcams and they have their applications but i mainly focus on traditional video cameras and then when i'm working with a live event production i will generally want to favor smaller chipped fixed lens cameras or camcorders with long zoom reaches if you have a nice large format digital camera or a dslr with a clean output you can of course use it in a multi-camera environment however when working with live events you may not want to be searching for focus with a really shallow depth of field and you certainly don't want any funky color profiles like log also in many cases having many smaller cheaper video cameras will go a lot further in upping the production quality than having a few really high-end cameras for my money camera angles trump camera image in a live setting now in terms of the role the camera plays in camera placement i break it down into three categories static cameras human operated cameras and remote cameras first static cameras this is the most basic setup you put your camera on a tripod you adjust the exposure and framing and you leave it i will generally use a static camera shooting a wide shot of the room as something to act as a cover while my other cameras are searching and moving to the shop if you're shooting with something with predetermined shot angles like a podcast or you have a very unique shot like say a goal post shot for a hockey game a static camera will be just fine and you can use relatively affordable cameras in this case action cams can work in these situations where static cameras don't work obviously is where you might need to constantly reframe the shot play very loose with the framing because things change during a show and you may not have a chance to adjust a static shot later the other downside to the static camera is that it occupies one input on your switcher while only offering you one cutting alternative inputs are relatively scarce especially on the cheaper switchers if you had 16 inputs and 16 static cameras i suppose you can make a very impactful live stream a live stream but that's really not an efficient use of the resources and if you're starting out you're not likely to have that many inputs which brings me to the next category the human operated camera this is a camera that is physically operated by a human being the advantage of this is you have a person that can actually make adjustments on the fly fixing exposure issues or framing following action capturing multiple angles or even move and find new camera angles the downside to having a human operator is that you need the communication between the director who is switching the cameras and the camera operator ideally you would want to have a talk back system between the operator and the director and a tally light system to let the operator know when they are live and not do anything funky when they're on live i have been able to sidestep this with a very simple setup by just instructing my camera operators to always assume that they will be live but this sort of restricts how quickly the camera operator can react to whatever is happening so on one hand we have static cameras which are super easy to set up but only give us one camera angle and on the other hand human operated cameras which give us any number of camera angles but are more expensive to set up not to mention need to add another person to the crew in between the two extremes are remote control cameras often referred to as ptz cameras for pan tilt zoom cameras i love these ptz optics cameras for certain jobs these cameras allow the control room to operate the camera through a separate controller and a cable the functionality at this moment sits somewhere between a static camera and a human operated camera the mechanism for the pan tilt is not as smooth and organic as someone operating a fluid head tripod especially when zoomed in all the way so don't expect to be able to track action with ptz cameras yet but one of the most powerful things about ptz cameras is the ability to set presets so you can pre-plan literally hundreds of camera angles from this single position this is really useful for something like a round table discussion or a board meeting so knowing what's in your inventory of static cameras human operated cameras and remote control cameras you determine your camera position based on what role you expect that camera to play in our conference example maybe you want to put a static camera on the wings to provide a wide cover of the full room a remote camera in the back which can deliver wide shots as well as a static close-up or if you anticipate a presenter with a lot of movement a human-operated camera in the back that can follow with a close-up and then move the remote camera to the wing which can serve as a wide angle a profile angle and then set a preset so that you can move it cover anyone who's asking questions in the room now there's no one-size-fits-all solution how you determine your camera placement will really be based on what you have available and what you expect to capture once you establish the camera placement you have to figure out how to get the camera signal back to the switcher for mixing and streaming here i'm sticking in the realm of 1080 hd production in traditional consumer broadcast setups that means two types of connectors hdmi or sdi hdmi is the more consumer of the two type of connectors the cheaper passive cables will max out about 30 feet or 10 meters for longer runs you'll need some active fiber optic hdmi which will get you about 100 feet or about 30 meters beyond that you will need hdmi repeaters now keep in mind that these active cables are directional so make sure you lay them in the proper direction sdi cables are the preferred professional broadcast standard with maximum cable lengths reaching upwards of 300 feet or 100 meters the bnc locking mechanism on xdi cables ensure that connectors are always secure on top of that sdis are incredibly easy to make custom lengths using rg6 cable and a crimper tool you can probably find both those at your local hardware store hdmis have 20 individual wires inside which makes custom cables sort of impossible or at least very very difficult another way to send wired video signals is to take that hdmi or sdi and send it over ethernet cable for this you'll need a converter on both ends ethernet cable has become a staple in my setup not for carrying video but for ptz camera operation as ethernet serves as power using poe power over ethernet and as a conduit for the ptz control signal now making your own custom ethernet cable isn't as simple as sdi cables but it's doable and very useful then if you're really familiar with networking protocols there's a format called ndi network device interface by newtek which sends camera signals through the internet network and these cameras can be essentially anywhere on the network but running wires isn't foolproof and in fact it can get really messy really quickly i've tried spooling the excess wires but you have to be very careful not to overly twist the cable which can damage the cable and lead to dropouts next you have to be delicate with the connecting heads hdmi especially because it's not an easy cable to repair even sdi stepping on the head will deform the connector and that's happened to me a couple of times then there's the issue of having to ensure people don't trip over the cables you lay down i put tape down i've put down cable guards i've rolled carpet everything i can but there's always someone who shuffles their feet and doesn't watch where they're walking i'm not trying to blame them safety is ultimately our responsibility so you always want to minimize how much traffic happens across our cables for their sake and for ours but an alternative to this wired mess is to go wireless and thankfully there's some solid options like the hololand mars 400s pro which the company sent over for me to review and incorporate into my streaming productions so let's talk about it the first thing i like about this device is it can take both sdi and hdmi and send it to output either sdi or hdmi that's really useful to me is i don't need additional adapter to convert sdi to hdmi or vice versa depending on the needs of my switcher that's a feature i wish more devices had the range of a hololand 400s pro is about 400 feet which is better than what i can do with a spool which is only 300 feet in a latency test i found the wireless transmission introduces about three frames of latency at 29.97 which is in line with the advertised .08 seconds on their website that rounds up to three frames or about 100 milliseconds a word of warning about latency there's a lot of sources that introduce latency first actually being the camera itself bear in mind that some latency won't really matter to the final viewer it's only visible when there's something to compare it to an example of that is imag which is image magnification for people in the room but back to this hololand mars 400s to power the transmitter you can use a sony type battery usb charging brick or dc either through 12 volt wall outlet or adapted d-tap to a large battery brick which might already be powering your camera so you really have a lot of options when you're supplying power which is wonderful i would say for short runs or permanent installations where you can ensure that there's no traffic on your cables then a wired connection is your best bet for longer runs that aren't permanent and situations where you may want the maximum free range say for a roving camera then really wireless is a no-brainer it actually opens a lot of possibilities you should check out the hololand 400s pro as one of your options now we land back at the heart of the multi-cam setup and that's the switcher in bygone errors of video there were two considerations either fully analog hardware systems which were rugged and reliable or software systems which were scalable but prone to bugs well these days it's kind of a foregone collusion you're going to want hardware and software if you need to get reliability and powerful options right out of the gate consider investing in a turnkey system like the new tech tricaster they're not cheap but they will get you started with everything you need and they come with plenty of support but being a diyer myself and generally cheap i have piecemealed my setup and it took a lot to get it right let me share a little bit about how i designed it which i've been trying to perfect over the last few years the great thing i like about what i've built is i can scale it up and down depending on the needs of the project and the size of my budget first my most basic setup and that's using the atem mini pro i jumped on board when blackmagic released their a10 mini this is a very simple hardware based switcher capable of mixing four physical camera hdmi inputs along with some limited graphic capabilities the original mini could send the mixed program signal out via usb cable to a laptop or a computer which could then be encoded and sent to a streaming site for the price the original a10 mini was a must-have the only thing missing was there was no way to monitor the cameras that were not on program so you had no way to preview what camera you wanted to cut to now you could feed those cameras through to a four-way monitor and then loop that signal back out to the switcher but then the other problem is you had no way of knowing which camera was live if all you're dealing with the static cameras that would be fine but you would need a lot of work around to get a human operated camera or a remote camera with that system well blackmagic solved that problem with the atem mini pro which has a multi-view that shows you all the inputs as well as allowing you to stream directly from the box for me that was a perfect solution blackmagic also has a mini pro iso which can do iso recording which means each source is recorded an xml record of the cut is stored so you can go back and edit your show also recently blackmagic has announced the extreme versions which bring the number of inputs up to eight along with some other ways of mixing multiple sources so if i'm going to have a relatively simple setup i will bring just my a10 mini pro monitor and converters and maybe a laptop to access some of the more advanced features of the mini pro i do a lot of events where i really want all i want to do is do some live cutting and save the finishing and polishing and graphics for later when i get back to my edit bay so that setup is perfect for that but if a production is more involved with graphics and playback of video i will bring in a streaming computer which i named balderstream running some live video software for free you really can't go wrong with the open source obs open broadcaster software which is a favorite among video game streamers if you need something a little bit more purposely designed for video application i can't recommend enough vmix software there are a lot of different levels so the entry price can be catered to whatever your needs are and you can upgrade from one level to the other i've worked my way all into the 4k version even though i don't ever work in 4k but i want some of those features available in that that tier i have a few ways of getting the video into the computer running vmix i can switch with my blackmagic a10 mini pro and send the final program into vmix as a single video source via usbc so i'm switching cameras on the hardware and then sending only that final program view to the software or i can use the blackmagic decklink duo 2 which has four sdi input lanes to capture four sources and then switch between those sources in vmix you can pop more than one of these cards into your computer so you can upgrade the number of inputs another great option that i recently discovered is the mirrorbox usb hdmi passthrough which takes an hdmi signal and sends it into the computer as a webcam just like an a10 mini if you're a gamer this seems like a perfect way to capture your screen without adding any stress on your video card and these are relatively inexpensive once the video is within vmix i can use that software to cut between sources add in any kinds of titles and animations playback assets record and stream i can even loop in zoom calls using either a second screen or a laptop or use vmix's call-in software to host remote guests for my live shows there's even a social app that allows me to pull live comments and put them on screen i really can't go into all the things you can do but personally i love having the freedom to be able to scale from using basic hardware to switch then adding in software for all the extra bells and whistles so how do you cut a live program well next time you watch a live show say a football game or a talk show or even a ted talk pay special attention to the camera angle choices now obviously you're not going to have a huge number of options of these big productions like the super bowl has [Applause] four or five and two five two three four and at first the editing choices may look like a total chaos [Applause] if you spend some time carefully studying it you will see a pattern emerge and it's sort of similar to the language you see in film you have establishing shots and then you cut in for dramatic effect back to our conference example when the presenter gets on stage perhaps we start with a wide shot of the entire room and then when the presenter starts we cut to a medium or a close-up if there's a big laugh or applause maybe we use that as an opportunity to go back to the wide shot again also we can mix it up with some picture and picture if we have a slide presentation having another angle comes in handy for just adding in some variety as you do more of these you'll come to recognize a rhythm to an event and how to cut between shots and frankly there's something truly exciting and uniquely fun about live editing hopefully you got some basic understanding of how to approach a multi-camera live streaming event the big difference between live and other forms of video production is all your editorial decisions have to be made beforehand or at least in real time as the event is unfolding that means a lot more pre-production and planning the key is to understand what it is you ultimately want to do before you even place the first camera and that's probably the hardest thing to figure out when you're working with a client but once you figure that out then you can design and test your setup and make sure you test test test thanks again to hololand and holy land mars 400 s pro for partially sponsoring this video it's really impressive product and i definitely think you should check it out if you like this video or found it helpful please like and subscribe and share the video around consider becoming a patron on our patreon where every little bit helped here are some of these awesome supporters and i say you guys are awesome you guys are awesome also consider checking out the merch store in the shelf below for some official filmmaker iq gear so now all that's up for me to say is to go out there and produce a multicam show stream something great i'm john hess i'll see you at filmmaker.com [Music] you

Channel: Filmmaker IQ

Views: 14,228

Keywords: Streaming, Steaming Setup, hollyland mars 400s pro, Wireless Streaming, Vmix, Atem Mini, Atem Mini Pro, Multicamera, Multicam, Event video, streaming video, Videography, live event, event coverage video, Live Switching tutorial, Live switching, Television production, TV production, live streaming, multicam, live stream

Id: 7FXEUDBS9R0

Length: 25min 25sec (1525 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 12 2021